by Karl Hudson | Dec 28, 2013 | Search Engine Optimisation
In today’s world, internet and online marketing have become increasingly important for growing businesses, both big and small. The key to online marketing is your website and the key to gaining traffic and potential customers to your website is search engine optimization. Many people are not familiar with search engine optimization and know next to nothing about white hat, grey hat, and black hat SEO. This article will give readers a broad overview of search engine optimization as well as explaining the difference between white hat, gray hat, and black hat SEO.
To begin, search engine optimization affects how well your site ranks on Google and other prominent search engines such as Yahoo and Bing.
The first type of SEO is white hat SEO. White Hat SEO is basically a process where users try to increase their search engine optimization through honest techniques and by following search engines’ guidelines. This means creating an error free website that has a ton of quality and unique content that offers a valuable experience to visitors. Examples of White Hat SEO include writing articles for other sites in order to gain backlinks, guest posting on blogs in order to gain targeted traffic, and posting on relevant forums in order to receive backlinks. White hat SEO is a very time consuming process because of the quality, time consuming work that must be done manually by humans.
Secondly, and in complete contrast to white hat SEO is black hat search engine optimization. Black Hat SEO seeks to improve search engine optimization through techniques that are frowned on by search engines, or even considered illegal. Black Hat SEO wants to rank websites as quickly as possible. There are many different black hat techniques. One is keyword stuffing, which happens when a certain website includes a huge amount of keywords in an article in order to rank highly for that keyword. Another black hat technique is creating thousands of low quality or spam backlinks that link to your site in order to try and gain backlinks. Other methods include cloaking and hidden text.
Black HAT SEO is found attractive by many website owners because it is extremely cheap and if done right, can still work. The costs of black hat SEO are a mere fraction of the cost of white hat SEO. However, black hat SEO is risky and can get you demoted or even outright banned from search engines such as Google.
As you might have figured out, grey hat SEO is a mixture of black hat and white SEO. Grey hat SEO avoids or bends the guidelines that search engines have. Many website owners choose to engage in grey hat SEO because it offers a balance. You can quickly rank your website without being too risky.
I hope you enjoyed this article about white hat, grey hat, and black hat SEO.
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by Karl Hudson | Dec 24, 2013 | Search Engine Optimisation
Google launched this update claiming that its search was going to be more designed to provide users with a more direct answer to their questions. Google actually started using this update in the end of August, but they only announced the change on September 26th.
WHAT DO WE DO NOW?
As you may have probably guessed by now, Google’s algorithms continue to be a complete mix of factors that weight the relevancy of a page or site to the search query typed in. This definitely has not changed and continues to progress in the same pattern.
Keywords are still a vital part of SEO. Google is trying to encourage SEOers to move away from just basing their strategies around keywords. They are now looking for people to actively engage users and to start answering questions.
Provided you’ve been keeping up to date with the latest SEO strategies, you should have no cause for worry. Many SEOers believe that their entire strategy needs to be revamped, but there is nothing to worry about.
Based on what we know about Google and how it’s improving their search results, we know there is a list of things that will continue to matter;
·Structured Data Mark up: If you scratch their back they’ll scratch yours. Making the search engine spider’s job easier will help them navigate through your site and do a much better job. Structured data can also help you improve your click through rates when your data is displayed in rich snippets.
·Google+: Google loves its own stuff. Its social network is essential in helping identify your online brand. Connecting it with concepts and serving your content in its search engine results pages.
·Keyword Optimisation & Content Creation: Keywords are not dead. You do not stop focusing on them; instead you have to learn how to refine them. Meaning focusing on quality content is becoming a vital part of the whole program and not over optimising keywords.
·Mobile SEO: Mobile SEO is becoming huge because everyone nowadays uses their mobile phones to access and search for things online, although there is still debate on whether or not people buy things online.
·Backlinks: Are still very important and a vital part to SEO and online marketing. You have to remember that even though Google is cutting back on their PR updates, they are still looking at backlinks, a valuable aspect of their ranking algorithm.
HUMMINGBIRD UPDATE IMPROVING UPON THE FUTURE OF SEO:
Hummingbird is a fantastic step forward in connecting relevant search result pages to the questions people are asking.
It could also be a great way for users to focus on gaining visibility, especially if they change their whole marketing approach to target the user first, answer the questions they are asking, then follow up with some fantastically written content.
Today, instead of focusing on questions like “How do I rank for this keyword?”, you would ask, “What are the best questions that I have about this keyword?”.
Google can help you identify these questions by simply typing in the search keyword and it will produce results of related search questions.
So now you know how to do this. You have to take a step forward and look to actually put this plan into action.
More of what we can do? https://old.getmediawise.com/
by Karl Hudson | Dec 24, 2013 | Search Engine Optimisation
For those of you that have not heard of Exact Match Domains, these are domains that contain the keyword in which you want to rank for. For example, if you were a dentist based in Newcastle upon Tyne, an exact match domain would be:http://www.dentistnewcastleupontyne.co.ukNow, the benefits of having a domain like this have decreased recently as Google has been focusing on reducing the amount of trust and link juice these types of sites can pass.
How can you ensure an EMD retains its power?
It’s simple. Google has been targeting poor quality content and poor quality anchor text structures on sites.
So one of the best strategies moving forward with any domain you have is to ensure that every piece of content you write is unique.
Then, any linking strategies you make have to target brand and generic anchor text.
Then, adopting the “less is more” principle you can look to build very high quality links into these sites.
As soon as you get the high quality links setup, it will help you increase the quality of your website.
CMSwire recently produced an article on Content Quality vs. Quantity. With this they tried to distinguish a clear winner. The article was published in September so it’s a little dated now.
“There is one question weighing on almost every marketer’s mind, or at least should be: what is better, quality of content or the quantity produced? The debate is ongoing and seems to be picking up momentum, but is there a clear and definitive answer to this question?
No. The answer is that simple.”
This piece is from http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/content-quality-vs-quantity-is-there-a-clear-winner-022575.php
Google has launched their recent update which is targeting quality content. Humming bird is the name of this update.
It is focusing on content that answer’s questions.
Answering questions is a great way to show off good quality content. The focus on semantic research is even more powerful thanks to this update.
What do I mean by semantically related content?
Semantically related content is content that is similar to other related keywords.
Google is becoming highly focused on this type of content, content that relates to other things.
You can see it from this example.
Now with this example, you can see a lot of searches relating to “keyword research”. This gives us a rough idea of different keywords that should be used in the articles.
These keywords can help us devise a good content plan and structure based on these related terms.
It also means that you will be answering a lot of the questions that Google is asking. This could hopefully assist you in creating great quality content.
Following on from the idea of using EMD’s and linking them to your site, this would give you the highest level of control on the links coming into your money sites.
It also means you can use grey hat techniques to help you achieve online success without having to worry about Google.
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by Karl Hudson | Dec 1, 2013 | Marketing
Most small business owners do not have the big bucks to market their business like the large companies do. This does not mean though that they should forget all about marketing as this is vital for the well-being and the success of their businesses. Since traditional marketing tool cost and arm and a leg, the best thing for small businesses to do is to make use of internet marketing tools.
Know Your Market
Keep in mind that your internet marketing endeavor will never be successful if you do not know who your target market is. There is no need to pay for a fancy marketing study to look for your your target market; if you know your product then you know who you cater to. Once you have a clear profile for your target market, what you need to do is to determine how best to reach them online. You can make us of blogs or even social networking sites.
Set a Realistic Budget
One good thing about internet marketing is that it can be successful even if you do not have much money. Just bear in mind though that while sticking to the free forms of online marketing will have great effects, it may also be to your benefit to get some paid ads. However, since you are taking out ads online, you will still pay less than what you wold normally pay for regular ads.
Get to Work on Branding
The world of online business is pretty harsh and you need to make a name for yourself. This is what branding is for and brand awareness can do wonders for your business. For your website not to be confused with that of another company’s, splurge a little on getting your own domain name as this is one investment that is sure to pay off.
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